Department Sponsors Pilot Programs To Encourage Women EEs and CpEs

Single-gender programs are one of several strategies
being studied by educators interested in encouraging women to pursue careers
in electrical and computer engineering. Shown here, high school participants
at Tech's all-women computer and technology camp spent a day in July working
on computer skills with elementary-school girls.

In an effort to help encourage women to choose careers in computers
and engineering, the Department is sponsoring two pilot programs - one at
the high school level and one for elementary students - using the Webber
Endowment, the Provost's Critical Needs Funds, and an equipment donation
from IBM.

The high school venture, called C-Tech2, involved a four-week residential
program in July for 26 women, all rising seniors in high school. The women
focused on the hardware and software aspects of computers, in addition to
mathematics- and engineering-related projects. Activities included programming,
computer-aided design, using Internet tools, building mousetrap cars, toothpick
bridges, polymers, and ceramics.

The program was organized by the College of Engineering's Office of Minority
Engineering Programs for women from across the state. Participants all agreed
that the program was valuable, and researchers plan to track participants'
college studies and careers. Another camp is planned for next summer.

The elementary school venture involves providing 12 computers to a Blacksburg
elementary school for use by all the students during the day and by an after-school
all-girls computer club.

"University and business groups across the country need to develop
efforts to understand the hesitancy of many women to get involved with electrical
and computer engineering," said Department Head Leonard Ferrari.

"This is not only an equity issue, but also an economic one,"
he said. The high paying jobs in the next couple decades, particularly in
the booming northern part of our own state, will be in computer-based fields.
Women currently make up 40 percent of the workforce. If women continue to
avoid these fields, they will not have access to some of the highest-paying
careers, and there may be regional shortages of workers for these fields."

Women have traditionally been a minority in these fields. Nationally,
women received about 12 percent of the EE degrees awarded in 1990, according
to numbers from the U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Educational
Statistics that were cited in a 1992 National Science Foundation report.
This was down from 14 percent in 1988. Women received about 30 percent of
the computer science degrees in 1990, down from 37 percent in the mid-1980s.

This downward trend in percentage of women in EE and CS is the reverse
of strong upward trends in women's participation in mathematics, biology,
physics, chemical engineering, mechanical engineering, and engineering as
a whole.

Some studies indicate that experience and confidence with computers is
a major factor. For example, a 1995
report of the MIT Department of Electrical and Computer Science stated
that the most noticeable results of two surveys of MIT undergraduates were
"that women, much more so than men, feel that they have come to MIT
less prepared to major in EECS than their peers."

"No one knows for sure what causes the disparity," Ferrari
said. "We do know that young girls and high school women don't often
get the same experience and confidence with computers as boys of the same
age."

The Bradley Department of
Electrical and Computer Engineering
Virginia Tech

Last Updated, November 23, 1997Questions or comments about the content: eqb@rightwordonline.comTechnical questions or comments: webmaster@birch.ee.vt.eduhttp://www.ece.vt.edu/ecenews/aug97/womenee.html